What Happened, Miss Simone?

[paul secor]

28 minutes ago, Hot Ptah said:

Nina Simone's autobiography, "I Put a Spell on You", touches on many of the issues discussed in this thread.

 

I don't have an interest in reading this but, even if I did, the fact that Dave Marsh wrote the introduction would be enough to put me off.

[Hot Ptah]

It is a very interesting book. The prior edition which I own has very different cover art, and no fatal introduction by Dave Marsh.

In this book, Nina is very candid about her disappointments and pain, and the choices she made. It is a quick read, and quite entertaining.

One thing that comes through very clearly in the book.  Nina fully expected to be a professional classical pianist. She says that she was not allowed to do that, despite sufficient training and talent, because of her race.  She turned to performing other styles of music only after her greatest dream was crushed. That pain seems to have had a huge influence on her entire life, according to her book.

[Deadman]

Several years ago I listed to 5 or 6 of her lps on Philips and RCA and was really impressed. Her versatility is far reaching. She covers many musical styles and is effective in all of them. She's not afraid to do a standard in an unusual tempo or style, and the majority of the it works well. And her music wears well on repeated listening. I'm not that concerned or interested in the idea of her music. I prefer to focus on the substance.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Deadman

[clifford_thornton]

I can see why TTK and others value her; yet I felt that I needed more or something else when listening to those Philips LPs. The doc is good and probably enough for me. YMMV.

[Hot Ptah]

I have over 20 of her albums and listen to them often for pleasure. I do not understand what other people think is missing in them. I find nothing missing, and find her music thoroughly satisfying. Different strokes.

[JSngry]

The remix of the RCA stuff was a revelation for me, because what I've always had variable reactions to are the backings, never the vocals. But as any good remix can do, backing go out the window, and vocals step up. Even the chops/etc revealed so much nuance in that voice. and then hearing the originals, more often than not...not really grippled.

This is pretty good:

 

But this is OMG:

 

and if a remix is what it takes to reconcile the "idea" with the "reality", so be it.

[Teasing the Korean]

8 hours ago, paul secor said:

 Dave Marsh 

There's a good reason to not read it!  I will have to seek out the version without him!  

[JSngry]

!

[JSngry]

 

 

 

[rostasi]

This album got so much play in our house,
that it's thoroughly ingrained in my memory.
A fan...with many more albums to come later.

R

---
Now playing: Staff Benda Bilili - Sopeka

[jazzbo]

For me there's no easing into her music, it hits me head on and I don't like all that I've heard, but I really do like a lot of it. She was a moving, driven artist.

[JSngry]

I'm finding that live footage amplifies the "reality"...she wasn't about being "all things rolled into one", she was a deeply driven person looking for herself, quite the opposite of looking for "everything". That she touched on everything along the way was perhaps less to present some Uber-Black-Music-Woman, than it was to get inside herself, to work through the bugaboos (which apparently eventually became demons) of personal identity. The records...many of them I can just half-listen to and be half-engaged in, and that's that. But all the live footage that's coming out,,,no, this woman demanded your attention, and she had the physical charisma to bring it all together. I've no doubt that she was..an "intense personality", but over the years, my appreciation for her performance has grown as I adjusted my perspective towards what she was doing for herself, away from what I thought I wanted her to be doing for me.

[duaneiac]

I guess I bought into the "idea" the first time I heard her on the radio long ago.  I t was probably one of her "hits" like "I Love You Porgy" or "Little Girl Blue", but whatever it was, it captured my attention.  I can't say there are any musicians whose recordings I like 100%, but if one likes the majority of a musician's recording, one can be called a fan.  In that case, I'm a fan of Nina Simone.  Since she covered so much musical territory -- from old folk tunes to blues to jazz standards to showtunes to rock hits of the day, etc. -- not everything works, but most of it does for me and  a lot of it is fascinating and quite moving.

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On 1-7-2015 at 0:20 AM, duaneiac said:

I look forward to watching this film.  I've long been a fan of her music.  Granted, her output is very much a mixed bag of jazz, blues, folk, rock, and soul music -- some of it works (and at times, sublimely), but some of it doesn't.  I don't think she thought of herself as a jazz artist since she never intended to be a professional singer.  She wanted to be a professional pianist, but not a jazz pianist.  She covered a lot of material in a lot of different genres, but  always made it unmistakably her own.

This clip from Montreux has long fascinated me.  She takes perhaps the worst popular song ever written and turns it into an unforgettably compelling moment.  This was not a "performance".  This is a soul laid bare, as real as it gets, as uncomfortable as that may be.  I don't know what was going on in her life at that time, but it must not have been a picnic being Nina Simone.

 

Thank you for this one, Duane. I feel exactly the same as you regarding her music. I'm a fan too. She feels real to me, true. That is the most important for me.